Thomas de Waal

Senior AssociateRussia and Eurasia Program

De Waal is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, specializing primarily in the South Caucasus region comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and their breakaway territories as well as the wider Black Sea region.

Education

BA, Balliol College at Oxford University

Languages

English; Greek; Russian

Contact Information

Resources

Tom de Waal is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment, specializing primarily in the South Caucasus region, comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and their breakaway territories, as well as in the wider Black Sea region.

De Waal is an acknowledged expert on the unresolved conflicts of the South Caucasus: Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, and South Ossetia. From 2002 to 2009, he worked as an analyst and project manager on the conflicts in the South Caucasus for the London-based NGOs Conciliation Resources and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

His latest book is Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is also author of the authoritative book on the Karabakh conflict, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (NYU Press, second edition 2013), which has been translated into Armenian, Azeri, Russian and Turkish, and of The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010).

De Waal has worked extensively as a journalist and writer in the Caucasus and Black Sea region and in Russia. He has twice worked as an analyst and reporter for the BBC World Service in London, from 1991 to 1993 and from 1998 to 1999, and continues to make documentaries for BBC Radio.

From 1993 to 1997, he worked in Moscow for the Moscow Times, the Times of London, and the Economist, specializing in Russian politics and the situation in Chechnya. He is the co-author (with Carlotta Gall) of the book Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (NYU Press, 1997), for which the authors were awarded the James Cameron Prize for Distinguished Reporting.

The Chechen connection to the Nemtsov’s murder has split the ruling elite. Putin’s problem is that Kadyrov has completely cleared Chechnya of all rivals, either Chechen or Russian—having fed and groomed his “dragon,” he has no Plan B in Chechnya.

The political fallout of the horrible murders in Gyumri will not result in a strategic re-orientation by Armenia away from Russia. However, it will undermine public support for Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his government.

Russia and South Ossetia are about to sign a “Treaty of Alliance and Integration.” However, normalization of relations with Georgia is impossible as long as Moscow continues to strengthen its grip on South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

2014 was a year of crisis. Ebola, ISIS, and Donbas are now part of the global lexicon. Eurasia Outlook experts weigh in on how crises on Russia’s periphery affected the country, and what these developments mean for Moscow in 2015.

Although it is now a century old, the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years.

While the Caucasus is too often treated as a subset of Russian history or as merely a gateway to Asia, it remains an important and combustible region, whose inner dynamics and history deserve a much more complex appreciation from the wider world.

While the nations of the Caucasus are heavily influenced by historical narratives of intractable ethnic conflicts, a more critical look at the region’s history reveals a number of surprising alliances and pragmatic resolutions.

Although the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is now a century old, it is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years.

Upcoming elections will be a test of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s continued political strength, which has been shaken by a major corruption scandal, an increasingly vocal opposition, and mounting economic challenges.